Rift Forming in the Global Warming Debate

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

What’s even better is the first comment on the site:

Maybe everyone should try reading the Bible, and you would see that the earth is God’s to destroy in His own time. People did not create this planet, and we can not destroy it. We are giving ourselves far too much credit if we believe that we can. God will destroy it, and we don’t know when that will be. Good thing for us the Bible also tells us how we can prepare for it! The answers have been there for thousands of years. People today are just too impatient to look for them.

Responses

Hi Scott,

My partner, the Brit, did a post on the walking vs driving thing. It won’t matter to liberals though, because forcing people to sacrifice for the cause makes them feel good. That’s why they keep bringing up the draft even though there’s no reason for it. Thanks for the link by the way.

Grit, You’re welcome for the link. Thank you for stopping by! Was the post on the GWR blog?

Mr. Darrell, I’m not saying that we should not take care of the Earth. You are exactly right. God commanded that we as human beings are to take care of it, including having dominion over the animals (that’s a whole other blog post).

Our government really missed the boat here regarding our forests. It took a huge fire in 1988 in Yellowstone and more recently in the Ponderosa pines of Arizona to get their attention that just letting the forests be themselves is not the answer to forest management.

Yes, I believe that we need to take care of the planet that God has created just for us. The original sin of eating the forbidden fruit is what has caused things to be “out of whack.”

Furthermore, God judged the whole world with a flood, a really huge flood. Think of the commotion that must have caused. It just might take several thousand years for the planet to recover from that. The Bible does say that the earth groans in longing for her restoration. I believe a lot of the natural catastrophes that we see on the evening news can be attributed to that groaning.

One major factor in the whole calculation of global weather patterns is the amount of precipitation that takes place. NO computer model can nor has attempted to factor this key element into the calculations of how hot or cold the Earth is getting.

Is the climate changing? Yes. Is there a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of hype about it? You bet there is. I’m not so sure that the technological advances that God has allowed humanity to advance in are at the core of the climate change. Now a sin-cursed Earth could cause some pretty bad things to happen, t but like I said in a previous post linked to in this post, that won’t turn around for at least another 1,007 years.

And yes, I will be on that new Earth that has been restored and I look forward to it.

Well, they say you can’t reason someone out of a position they got to without reason (or sheer irrationality), but we’re also supposed to hang on to hope.

1. “Dominion” is a KJV term. You think it means something close to “absolute control.” In KJV terms, it means “wise stewardship.” Specifically, it does not include the power to “waste,” or harvest in a way that will either damage the renewability of the resource, or in a way that may harm a neighbor. Using the air as a waste dump is “waste.” Those are rather archaic legal terms, but they present a picture of stewardship, which is what God commanded. In short, “dominion” is what I’m arguing — you may want to spend some time studying those passages and how they were translated.

2. Apparently you were born or woke up in 1988. The debates about the management of the forests are very old. For your area, you may want to revisit the discussions over the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation controversies in the 1970s, RARE I and RARE II. The issue of fire control, and whether the anti-environmentalist mandated “fight every fire to the death” policies were wise or sustainable was deep in controversy years before the Yellowstone fire. Our present administration policies of clearcutting the forest so they cannot burn are equally short-sighted, and will proved equally disastrous in the long run. To the extent the Forest Service and local foresters have been able to manage the forests for sustainability — that is, as stewards — we owe more to their commitment to science and doing the right thing than to major policies out of Washington in this administration.

3. Eating the forbidden fruit didn’t damage creation. We Christians understand the difference between human sin and the rest of creation. In any case, God’s command to both Adam and Noah were post-fall. It is Man who is “out of whack,” and not God’s creation. Jesus didn’t die for the salvation of Long John Silver’s fish fillets.

4. The flood of Noah was not world-wide. Follow Augustine’s admonition, and don’t try to stretch scripture to ridiculous lengths that make scripture and the church look foolish. In any case, the story is a flood for human sin, not Earth’s sin. Again, after that flood, God instructed Noah to be a steward of the Earth. You’re going to great lengths to avoid or get around that commandment of God.

5. Wherever did you get the idea that precipitation isn’t a factor in warming analysis? That’s silly. Precipitation and the movement of energy in the atmosphere are key considerations. Precipitation is also a key indicator of problems. Global warming means we get more violent rainstorms, and paradoxically, more significant snowstorms in some places (such as upstate New York from the lake effect off the Great Lakes). Precipitation records tend to corroborate global warming warnings.

1,007 years? So, you disagree with Bede, Ussher, and others on the age of the Earth?

I think you’ve been sniffing too much of the hydrogen sulfide from Yellowstone’s geysers and pots.

1. I know it’s a KJV term. I’m fine with being a wise steward of wildlife and the earth’s resources, but I don’t believe that God intended humanity to let the animal kingdom to run roughshod over humanity either.

2. I know the forest management debate is an old one, but ’88 and Arizona 2002 were some major fires of concern. Dead trees (those that are charred from said fires) standing in the midst of the forest is not healthy and they need to be cleared out. Also pine beetles have killed a huge number of trees, so that adds to the “standing dead” population, further adding to the easily burning forest. Those need to be cleared out. Fires are essential to the repopulation and restoration of the forests as the pine cones won’t burst without the high temperatures produced by fires. Additionally, fires clear out a great deal of undergrowth.

3. Gen. 3:17-18 (ESV) Because you have… eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.

Sounds like eating the forbidden fruit did a pretty good number on the Earth.

4. If the flood was not global, why did God have Noah build a huge floating box? Why not just tell Noah and his family Go over here to this area and heard the animals with you. Why break the fountains of the deep for a local flood?

5. Roy Spencer does a tremendous job at debunking the global warming hype, and one of his points is regarding global precipitation and how it is not calculated and contends that there is no way (at this point in time) to calculate the global amount of precip in a given day.

6. You misread me:

like I said in a previous post linked to in this post, that won’t turn around for at least another 1,007 years.

I believe the earth is in the neighborhood of 6,000-10,000 years. The “at least 1,007 years” is calculated from today to the time when God restores the earth: 7 years for the tribulation, 1,000 years for Christ’s earthly Millennial reign.

There could be a little more than that between the Rapture (another KJV word) and the Tribulation. We also don’t know how long Armageddon will last and how much time will lapse between the Millennial reign and Armageddon as well as the time between Armageddon and the restoration of the Earth.

Currently in Cody

‘Tis the Political Season!

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome new readers and old readers! You old readers will notice that I have a new look on my blog; hope you like it because I do! Your comments, few as they have been, are welcome anytime. Just be decent about it.
If you have any questions, check out the FAQ's/NSFAQ's page.

My Flickr Photos

HTML allowed in comments:

Want to do some editing in your comment? To do so the easy way, go to my Firefox page, download and install Firefox, then download the BBCode extension. Highlight what you want to edit and use the HTML Code menu. If you don't want to do all that (and even if you do), see also: Here, here